Timeline of Human Prehistory - Mesolithic

Mesolithic

• c. 20,000 years ago: Chatelperronian culture in France. Kebaran culture in the Levant.
• c. 16,000 years ago: Wisent sculpted in clay deep inside the cave now known as Le Tuc d'Audoubert in the French Pyrenees near what is now the border of Spain.; approximate age of Haplogroup V (mtDNA)
• 15,000 years ago: The woolly rhinoceros goes extinct; approximate age of Haplogroup T (mtDNA).
• c. 14,800 years ago: The Humid Period begins in North Africa. The region that would later become the Sahara is wet and fertile, and the Aquifers are full.
• 13,000 to 10,000 years ago: Late Glacial Maximum, end of the Last glacial period, climate warms, glaciers recede; approximate age of Haplogroup K (mtDNA).
• 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC): Land ice leaves Denmark and southern Sweden; start of the current Holocene epoch.
• 11,000 years ago (9000 BC): Emergence of Jericho, which is now one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Giant short-faced bears and giant ground sloths go extinct. Equidae goes extinct in North America.
• 10,000 years ago (8000 BC): The Quaternary extinction event, which has been ongoing since the mid-Pleistocene, concludes. Many of the ice age megafauna go extinct, including the megatherium, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, cave bear, cave lion, and the last of the sabre-toothed cats. The mammoth goes extinct in Eurasia and North America, but is preserved in small island populations until ~1650 BC.